6.1.22

6.1.2022 Chance of imaging?

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My apologies for failing to recognize the new year in the image text due to mental inertia.

 Thursday 6th Jan 26F [-3C] Clear sky with all day sunshine promised. Solar imaging seems likely but I still have the white light set-up on the 6". Not that it is major to swap to H-alpha. Just a matter of re-assembly of the long etalon & filter stack. Dewing of the optics is the usual problem after a frost. I hang a 2.5kg weight from the tail end to balance the scope during such changes. Otherwise the telescope would nose down to the floor. 

I switched on the objective's heat bands at 10am but the sun is only now shining fully on the dome. This is due to neighbour's hedges and trees casting shadows.

12.11 Close up of AR2924 using the D-ERF and 2.6x GPC on the camera nose. Not impressed! Thermal agitation. ImPPG seems to be "digitizing" the image into blocks regardless of settings in AS!3 or ImPPG. It looks better on the monitor during capture.

12.22 Still trying but using normal settings. The seeing may be improving. 

12.25 It has clouded over from the west! Not what we were promised!

12.51 36F in the dome. Used the cloud break to swap over to H-alpha. Brief gaps in racing clouds allowed focusing and gain adjustment. The results were absolute garbage!

I tried again after lunch but the sun was now sailing along the ridge of the house. The image was boiling and mushy.

 

The Moon was quite low in the south in the early evening. I tried to capture enough frames to make a mosaic but the seeing was very agitated. Jupiter, alongside, would barely show a single band. I tried my range of three GPCs [individually] but nothing helped.

 

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